


It Gets Better

by expositorbeauregard (Chromathesia)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Brief quarter-elf children, Canonical Character Death, Death, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Healing, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Post-Canon, Things Get Better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-26 04:32:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14992829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chromathesia/pseuds/expositorbeauregard
Summary: Eventually, Keyleth will be okay, and each of the other members of Vox Machina help in their own way with that, knowingly or unknowingly.





	It Gets Better

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place at some point after Vecna's defeat. Time is a bit immaterial, bar the births of Vex's and Percy's children. This wasn't beta'd and has only been briefly edited.

“It gets better,” Pike says to her as they wander through the halls of the Temple to the Everlight. The polished stone reflects the sunlight across the room, sometimes into Keyleth’s eyes. Keyleth watches as Pike ( _Clanky, Pickle, we’re-all-kinds-of-fucked-up_ ) pauses to bow to the totem to her deity, an indistinct prayer whispered through her lips. She watches as the smaller figure of her friend seems to glow a bit, though whether that’s from the sun shimmering on her white robes—Pike had long since hung up the Plate of the Dawnmartyr to don Sarenrae’s colors—or from some divine touch she’s uncertain. Keyleth had always felt a bit awkward among the divine rituals that seemed commonplace in Vasselheim, and now she feels even more out of place, here in this place of sunlight and warmth and joy when her life feels dark and cold and numb.

“Hmm?” She does not voice her doubt, but she knows that Pike feels it.

“I know it feels… lonely right now,” the cleric says. “It’s hard. I never said it wouldn’t be. But it will get better. I promise.”

 _Your promises are hollow_ , Keyleth wants to say. _I know it can get better, but I don’t know if I want it to. If it gets better, it means that I’m forgetting, and I can’t forget, I don’t want to forget, if I forget then I will never forgive myself, and I know that he’ll never forgive me—_

“D’you think?” she says instead, her voice echoing with a weak attempt at hope. She winces at her still horrible acting, but Pike pretends not to notice.

“I’m certain,” Pike says firmly. “It always does. It’ll be a lot harder beforehand, I’m sure, but you can’t let yourself sink into a hole for the rest of your life, Keyleth. It’s not healthy for anyone.”

 _Especially for someone who’ll live as long as you will_ , Pike says and Keyleth hears in between the lines. The two are silent for a little while before Pike sighs and stretches her arms above her head.

“I’m sorry, Keyleth, but Scanlan wanted to get something to eat and I have to go meet up with him,” she says _–and you’re not invited, but it’s nothing against you, it’s just that we’re trying to get our lives back together, we’re rebuilding, we’re moving on, and you’re not, and—_

“No, no, no, that’s totally fine! That’s fine. Please, go and meet Scanlan. I’ll be okay, I’ll be better than okay, I’ll be great,” Keyleth half-says, half-rambles, already sort of pushing Pike towards the entrance of the Temple. Pike lets out a laugh that is silver bells and sheer silk ribbons in its cheer before gently brushing Keyleth off with a wide grin on her face that fades into a somber smile.

“Keyleth, please, if you’re having a hard time, if you need anything at all, I’m still here for you. Don’t hesitate to talk to me, okay?” she says.

Keyleth tries again to muster up some sort of genuine smile that she can give to her former party member, forever friend.

“I will,” she says.

The words are empty of meaning, but Keyleth doesn’t expound and Pike doesn’t push. They give each other one last smile and hug before turning and splitting ways.

 

* * *

  

“Keyleth, darling, you’re losing the color in your cheeks. Are you sure you’re alright? Have you been eating?”

Keyleth looks up from the little golden orb at the tip of her fingers (bright sunlight tomorrow, a good omen-slash-weather forecast). “What? Yeah, I’m fine,” she says before turning her attention back to the baby in her arms, wiggling her fingers around so that the ball of light dances through the air. It seems as though holding the newest Percy is the only thing that brings a genuine smile to her face, and she’s been taking advantage of it whenever the de Rolos –she can’t get over the plural to that last name, no matter how long it’s been– will allow her to impede on their life. Zephrah is quiet without _him_ , far too quiet, so quiet that all she can hear sometimes are the unwelcome thoughts that creep in like mold on bread, and Whitestone is so loud and bright and succeeds at distracting her from them so well.

Keyleth can feel Vex’s ( _that-is-my-sister-her-name-is-Vex’ahlia-you-can-call-her-Vex-some-call-her-V_ –) gaze on her as she reclines on Trinket’s slumbering form. She hasn’t been able to make eye contact with the other twin ( _Stubby, Twinnie, do-not-go-far-from-me_ ) for days, weeks, months. It isn’t just the bone structure that Tary had pointed out so long ago that haunts her, that likens Vex to _him_. Keyleth can see nuances in Vex’s posture and walk, the way that she readjusts the feather in her hair without thinking, the way that she absentmindedly traces a finger around the shell of her somewhat pointed ear. Even now, Keyleth could imagine Vex’s eyes, the pity and sympathy that usually colored them, so different from the love and almost-worship that she would expect upon seeing them—

“I’m fine,” Keyleth says again.

“Keep telling yourself that, darling, I won’t believe it,” Vex drawls from behind her. Keyleth stiffens but continues to enchant the child in her arms with the miniature sun between her fingers.

“He wouldn’t like you moping like this, you know.”

The statement hangs in the air, the same pressure that sat on Keyleth’s chest whenever the raven visited or whenever she saw a patch of snowdrops now on her shoulders and her head and her form and on her everything, and her mind hurt from how much it pressed upon her, and she felt like she was suffocating all over again. _What do you know?_ she wants to ask, but how could she ask that of Vex, of she who was once his other half and is now just as alone as Keyleth is? ( _I-don’t-accept-this; I-know-that-it’s-hard-and-I-am-sorry_ )

All she can do is hum to Percy IV in her arms and bounce him, her gaze far off in the distance.

 

* * *

  

He’s in his workshop when Vex manages to reclaim her son and shoo Keyleth away for a bit. The smoky, sulfurous smell that used to hang in the air has finally begun to fade, replaced by a more potent odor of oil and the sharp scent of ozone from what Percival the Third ( _Freddy, Whitey_ ) now crafts. When she approaches he immediately shuts off some of the more dangerous machinery— “Really, Keyleth, you need to tie your hair up before you walk into here”— and cleans his hands of a black, slick substance before turning to her.

“Anything I can help you with, then?” Percy asks. Keyleth can still see the jeweled stud in his ear, a remnant of a happier and more dangerous time.

“How did you do it?” The words escape her before she can keep them in check.

Percy’s brow furrows. “How do you mean?”

She fidgets. “Y’know. When you were in that cell. How did you live after…” her words trail off but she’s said enough for him to understand her.

She watches as he lets out a weary sigh, his shoulders slumping over as he folds into himself. His hands come up to take his spectacles off of his face and clean them with the inside of his shirt. She waits patiently as he stares off into the distance, a past of smoke and dark whispers that he hadn’t thought of in a long while suddenly returning to his conscious thought.

“I didn’t,” he finally says, his voice low as he puts his glasses back on. Keyleth blinks. Of all things, her cool and collected best friend being stuck in the same hell that she currently stews in for two years isn’t what she had anticipated, and it isn’t exactly reassuring either. _And that was with his family, with his kin, with those he had lived with and loved for years and years and I had only really known him for two, so how could my own feelings compare?_

Percy reads the confusion that must have appeared on her face because he sighs again and closes his eyes, thumb on his chin and finger on his lips as he sinks deep into thought.

“For the longest time, I was stuck in a haze,” he says carefully, seeming to plan every single word. “It was vengeance and anger and retribution, and then it became determination and planning until we found Cass alive and Scanlan destroyed the List.” The bitterness at their friend’s action still reads in his voice. “Then it was confusion and uncertainty and numbness. I didn’t think about it for a long time, Keyleth. It was never something that I let myself dwell on, up until the very end. I still don’t know if I’ve let myself dwell on it long enough to heal from it. All that I know now is that I miss my family a lot and wish that things were just a little bit different.”

They’re both silent for a second, the gunslinger and the druid. Keyleth doesn’t know what she can say in light of what Percy did, and he seems just as uncertain. He gives a brief sigh before turning to fully face her.

“Keyleth, you’re a wonderful leader and a good person, and I know you’re going to try and kill me for saying this, so please try and abstain from that. I know that Vax was your first and he’ll always be special to you for that, but your behavior is getting fucking ridiculous at this point. This isn’t you.”

She physically flinches at _his_ name and she can feel her heart begin to pound faster and the back of her throat begin to seize, her chest tightens, she freezes in place from the pain, the pain of seeing snowdrops and ravens and sharpened daggers of obsidian and iron. Percy looks on, his face virtually emotionless except for the subtle glisten of tears in his eyes as he watches her try to hold from breaking down at the simple mention of a name. She wants him to hold her but at the same time doesn’t want to force her pain onto him as she had done in the past.

“It’s time to move on,” Percy says, not meeting her gaze.

_Move on? Move on and forget and let him fade into the sands of time, losing the importance he once had in my life?_

“How can you say that to me?” she chokes out to him, the thoughts of the black-clad rogue-paladin filling her mind again with the softness of raven’s feathers brushing against her cheek _(I-love-you-Keyleth-of-the-Air-Ashari)_.

“You’re not the only one who misses him, Keyleth.” And before she can respond, Percy turns his back to her, his hands going to his tools once more, a wordless but firm dismissal.

 

* * *

 

It’s not hard to find Scanlan ( _you-were-saving-a-wish-for-me?_ ); all she has to do is follow the sounds of jolly music and children’s shouting. The first person she recognizes upon walking up is Kaylie, freshly out of school for the year and ready to return to her less-than-legal merchant job, at least temporarily. She’s dancing around while playing her fiddle, a skip in her step as the instrument sings out a jolly line. Keyleth hasn’t seen her dance and play like this since Scanlan’s resurrection before his initial departure, but now there’s nothing somber about her music now, it’s all innocent and sparkling and free.

Kaylie notices Keyleth watching and smiles at her knowingly, not missing a single note, before nodding towards Scanlan, who is singing a harmony along to her violin’s song. “C’mon kids!” she shouts out, dancing off down the street as the children chase after her, yelling happily. Scanlan looks as if he’s about to run off with them before Kaylie looks meaningfully at Keyleth and he finally notices that she’s there, watching him spread his joy yet again.

“Hey, Keyleth!” he says, sounding slightly out of breath as he stops singing and plops onto the ground, trying to catch his breath. “What’s brought you to Emon all of a sudden?” _You haven’t been here in so long, since after the fight with Vecna, actually, and maybe that’s from all of the memories you forged here, and how on earth could you have forgotten about all of those, they haunt your dreams and your realities—_

She shrugs halfheartedly. “Looking for you, I guess,” she says. _Why_ am _I here?_ She mentally asks in response to the mental message that she hears from Scanlan. _I’m not a part of this life anymore, I’ve been so detached, and now I just come back with all of my baggage and I don’t know what to do and it’s been so long, how could I get over this now—_

Scanlan’s chipper attitude fades into a more serious look immediately, a look that she could remember seeing on the usually crass gnome’s face all of ten times in the past few years. “Is it about Vaxy-boy?” he asks, extending a leg out and rotating his ankle.

Keyleth’s heart skips again horribly, but she forces herself to work through it and nod firmly. “Y-yeah. I need your advice.”

“What, advice from little old me?” he crows, the twinkle back in his eyes. “I can’t possibly think of anything you’d want to ask from me. You seem to have it all sorted out, anyhow.”

“What?”  Keyleth is baffled.

“Of course! Sitting around, acting all depressed—why, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think it was less of a break-up and more of a funeral. Seeing as I _do_ know better, I know that that’s _exactly_ what it is, so why would I say anything else?”

Keyleth sees a bitter smile cross Scanlan’s face as his gaze leaves hers and seems to settle down the road, where Kaylie had danced off to. “You’re allowed to feel sad, Keyleth. You _should_ feel sad. Life’s fucked up, and you got the short end of the stick this time. Let yourself be upset about it, because then the happy moments and good times are that much sweeter.”

Scanlan gets up and walks over to pat her hand. “I watched my baby girl die, Keyleth. For a moment, I felt like I was drowning, like I’m sure you feel. It’s not the same, I know—every time I see Kaylie, I thank Ioun that it’s different. I wish it were slightly different for you, but I’m sure you’ll make it through.” She notices the crafty gleam in his eye now. “And once you do, make sure to tell me so that your epilogue in my book isn’t just you moping for all of eternity. Right now, it’s just a lot of you going _‘Oh, Vaaaaaaax’ildaaaaahhhhn!’_ ” he moans out the last sentence with a melodramatic hand draped across his forehead, leaning backwards onto one leg as though fainting to the ground.

Keyleth is unable to hold back a grin at the theatrical display, and even a little chuckle escapes her despite her tight chest and clenched fists. She watches as Scanlan’s impish smirk softens into a genuine smile to her before he turns and starts singing to himself as he wanders down the road, towards where Kaylie had herded the children off to.

“Heal the Vax, make him a better elf for you and for me and for the entire adventuring band. There are duergar dying. If you cared enough for the adventurers, you’d bring Vax back to help us with the stabby stab…” The long-forgotten words and melody follow the gnome’s exit.

 

* * *

 

It’s when Keyleth goes to visit Pike a second/third/fourth/she-can’t-remember-how-many time that she finally decides to stop by the Braving Grounds. Grog isn’t necessarily there often, but Keyleth doesn’t think she could handle going on a bar crawl solely to find her friend.

Thankfully, she can hear the dull thuds and much louder battle roars that accompany them inside of a building close to the Crucible. She carefully lets herself in: it’s sparsely furnished, but that makes sense seeing as it’s not meant to serve as a home. There is only one room in the structure. Bags of sand hang from the ceiling on hooks, the ground is firmly packed sand that has been carefully flattened, and the walls have cracks from where things and people have been thrown against them. Pike has stopped frequenting the place, but Keyleth has run into Grog on his way to and from here enough times to know that he’s still training in between learning his alphabet.

Grog throws one last hard punch at the currently abused bag of sand and catches a glimpse of her. “Keyleth!” he booms as though she’s a mile off rather than just ten feet, and when the bag of sand flies back towards him he simply holds it back instead of hitting it again. “How’ve you been?”

Keyleth hesitates before she holds out a hand flat and shakes it, the universal sign of “so-so” that even Grog could understand.

“I feel you,” Grog says, unhooking the bag of sand and throwing it onto the ground. “Say, how would you feel about having a li’l spar?”

“A spar?” Keyleth echoes.

He gives her an enthusiastic nod. “Yeah! Whenever I feel like shit, I like to come here and smack things. It’s just more fun when things smack you back, y’know?” He drives a fist into his open palm to emphasize his point.

Keyleth bites her lip. She hadn’t fought—really fought, a no-punches-held spar—since Vecna, and she hadn’t really wanted to fight for a while, but Grog’s enthusiasm is contagious and she’s really really tempted to, and of all of Vox Machina, Grog would have been her only challenge now.

She uncertainly takes her shoes off, puts her fists up in an awkward position, and squats slightly, rearranging her still-too-long limbs into some semblance of order.

“No, Keyleth, you’ve got ta, er,” Grog quickly readjusts her fists and puts her elbows closer into her body, “okay, now hit me.”

“Hit you?” Keyleth asks uncertainly.

Grog nods vigorously. “Yeah, just like,” he slaps himself on the cheek, “hit me, right there.”

Keyleth closes her eyes briefly, centering herself, feeling the dirt beneath her feet, imagining it coming up and her becoming one with it, allowing herself to succumb to the embrace of the earth for the first time in a long time. She feels her skin split painlessly as cold spires of green crystal pierce out of her, even as her skin itself begins to shift and become rougher in texture, crumbling away and into the shape she used to wear like a second body, and it is only when her body has fully morphed into that of an earth elemental that she leans forward and _punches_ Grog with all of her strength.

She sees the surprised excitement in his eyes as he gives her a wicked grin. “Yes!” he crows to her, and she sees his eyes light up with the unnatural fire of rage before he throws himself at her, disavowing all weaponry just to pummel her. The same flame coughs into being inside of her—she remembers this, she remembers the heat of battle with arrows and bullets flying through the air, punctuated with strident tones morphing into magic that speared their foes and the pure white glow shimmering off of armor and raven’s wings flashing forth, shedding feathers as the one controlling them threw daggers into the melee and shifting into darkness to teleport after them. The heartbreak creeps back up to her as she remembers _him_ , remembers him so clearly despite the shadows that he disappeared into.

“Fuck you, you Raven Bitch!” she finds herself screaming as she collides with Grog again, though her elemental throat turns the words into rumbles that shake the earth in their fervor. “Fuck you, fuck you, he’s not yours, he’s never been yours! Give him back!” She kicks out at Grog, tripping him over, before diving on top of him. She has no doubt that were she in her half-elven self, tears would be streaming down her eyes, but her elemental shape thankfully has no way to cry. “Give him back!”

It’s hard to stay in the emotions when you’ve got an enraged goliath chasing you through his training grounds, his fists exploding through bags of sand when they aren’t crashing cracks through your earthen form, and Keyleth feels the stress and dark emotions that had spent so long plaguing her finally leave, even if only temporarily, vanquished in the face of adrenaline and blood-pounding excitement and determination to topple her more formidable foe.

 

* * *

 

“Hey, Tiberius.”

The statue stands tall, a carefully carved figure of marble but for the clear green crystal that circles its form the way that the magic her dragonborn friend used to wield once did. She had visited a few times before, but still she finds herself tracing the etched words “ _I Encourage Peace_ ” with a single finger.

“It’s been a little while,” she says. “A lot happened, actually.” She clears her throat. “Well, nothing new happened since my last visit, really. Y’know, after Vecna was sealed away and Vax—” She can’t continue for a little while. The marble form of Tiberius Stormwind looks on as she holds back the light sobs.

“I-it’s been hard, Tiberius,” she manages to say. “It’s been getting better, but it’s still hard. I don’t know what to do anymore, and I know it’s been so long, but I wish you were here. I wish you were still here and that I was still able to talk to you and that you could bluster at me and tell me that I shouldn’t be acting like this and holding myself more like the leader I am”— she starts laughing through the sobs— “and I’m afraid, Tiberius. I’m not as sad anymore, really, and I’m afraid of that. He meant so much to me, but now I’m not as sad over it. Does that mean that I’m not sad about his d—about his being gone now, or does that mean that I’m healing and that it’s alright? I don’t know, and I hate that I don’t know. It was so sudden—he was there, and then he wasn’t—but it wasn’t sudden at all, really, since we all knew that he was going to d—”

Keyleth cuts herself off and tries to re-center herself. “It happened, though,” she says, forcing herself to calm down. “Though I hate that it did. I can’t go against a god. I’m not a god. I’m just me. I don’t know what to do anymore.”

She looks up at the statue one last time. “I wish you were here to help, Tiberius. I wish he were here to come here with me. I wish everyone was still here. I miss you both so much.”

She falls quiet for a long while before taking a deep breath. “But I know you died the way you wanted to. You were defending your home. I would want to be defending Zephrah at death. And he died so that we could live if you want to look at it that way. He’ll be there for me when I die too. And that’s fine. That’s good. I can live with that, I think.”

Keyleth hugs the base of the statue briefly. It’s cold on her cheek. “Thanks for everything, Tibs. I’ll be back soon.” And she leaves.

 

* * *

 

“Hey, you there, Antlers! Welcome to the Slayer’s Cake!” The voice is unexpected, the person it comes from even more so. Keyleth blinks before her grin breaks across her face.

“Tary! You’re here! In town!” Keyleth’s excited words bring a wide smile to his face.

Taryon Darrington had last been deep in Wildemount, when last she checked, but now he’s here and in front of her and working behind the counter of the bakery that they had opened in the long-ago times of peace after the Conclave were slain. He wasn’t wearing his normal bejeweled helm and polished armor, but his robes were long and dark crimson embroidered with gold and purple and green and Keyleth can see that the number of smaller bags that he always seemed to have on him has multiplied. Golden chains hung off of his neck and arms. She can see the lines that time has traced into his face and the slight silvering of his temples, but he still looks young and fit as he always has.

He leans on the counter. “How can I help you?”

“It’s great to see you, T,” Keyleth says. “Could I get a Sun Treat? How’s Larry?”

Tary raises an eyebrow at the nickname that she uses. “No one’s called me that since Vax. I didn’t even remember that name,” he says conversationally, grabbing a freshly iced Sun Treat from a tray. “Not sure why not. Larry’s doing very well; he’s looking to teach in the Lyceum, so I might be leaving the Darrington Brigade to Lionel and K’ryyn if that ends up working out. Would you care for a Blondie as well? They’re named after me, if you remember.” He winks to her as she hands him the handful of copper for the Sun Treat.

Half of Tary’s words don’t register to Keyleth. It’s the first time that someone’s mentioned _his_ name and she didn’t feel herself being pressed into the earth by some dark emotion. Now, she’s remembering his exasperation of _“Ermahgerd Swearagen_ ” and she remembers with some melancholy hint of fondness his initial attack of Tary, and even when she’s walking out, dazedly waving good-bye at a now somewhat concerned Tary, she remembers, and for once she does not want to cry, though she barely tastes the sugary sweetness and tart lemon hints of the Sun Treat.

 

* * *

 

It’s a joyous occasion that Keyleth jogs into, the antlers on her circlet bumping into the doorway as she darts through. “Ah, sorry!” she says absentmindedly, not realizing that she knocked into a wall and not another person.

“Keyleth! Slow down, darling, there’s plenty of time for us all.”

Vex’s soothing voice calms Keyleth down almost immediately, and her smile relaxes Keyleth that last little bit that she needed to calm down. She looks past Vex’s somewhat tired face and into the small bundle in her arms. Black wisps of hair, eyes closed, skin beginning to fade into a pale pink from the bright red it started out as. She can already see glimpses of the angular face that the child is sure to develop. The small dark-haired toddler that Keyleth once rocked and cooed to is now at her feet, banging a fist into her leg, trying in vain to gain her attention from the baby boy that Vex holds. A single pleading glance is all that Vex needs to pass the bundle to Keyleth before shushing Percy IV and ushering him away.

Keyleth looks more carefully at the face now. Already she can see why Vex chose the name that she had, in the shape of his face and the slight pallor of his skin.

“Hello, Vax’ildan,” she says softly. The baby boy yawns a little and settles into her arms, fist clenching around the raven’s feather that Keyleth places into his hand.

Maybe it’s a figment of her imagination, but when she looks up Keyleth thinks she can see a winged form leaning against the room’s corner, tucked away into a shadow, eyes flitting between being locked intently on the child in her arms and locked on his mother, black leather armor cleaner than she had ever seen it. The figure finally looks to her before his face softens into a familiar grin and, for the first time in years, Keyleth feels that she is at peace.

**Author's Note:**

> Admittedly, this was written as a catharsis for some of my own personal life, so I apologize for any perceived OOCness. You can find me talking about Critical Role on Tumblr under expositorbeauregard.


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